A base strip of this type comprises a housing which has a wall portion and forms at least one plug-in location into which the at least one plug connector part can be inserted. Arranged on the wall portion of the housing is at least one contact element for electrically contacting to the plug connector part. The base strip can be arranged, for example, on a circuit board in order to allow one or more plug connector parts to be connected to the circuit board. In this case, the at least one contact element can be brought into engagement in an electrically contacting manner with the plug connector part, and is also electrically connected to the circuit board, for example to a strip conductor of the circuit board, so that the plug connector part can be electrically connected to the circuit board by the contact element.
In order to arrange the at least one contact element on the wall portion in a mechanically fixed manner, a dome is provided on the wall portion, which dome protrudes from the wall portion and has an opening through which the at least one contact element extends in an insertion direction. The contact element is held mechanically in the opening, so that the plug connector part can be fixed to the contact element in order to establish an electrical contact.
Base strips of this type are usually produced as plastics moldings by means of plastics injection molding. In plastics injection molding, a plastics material is introduced into an injection mold and flows into the mold in a flow direction which corresponds, for example, to the longitudinal extension direction of the base strip. The mold is a negative mold for the base strip and, after the plastics material has cured, the formed workpiece can be removed from the mold (known as “demolding”) to obtain the base strip.
If the base strip is formed in this manner, plastics material flows into correspondingly formed portions of the mold during injection molding to form a dome. Since these portions of the mold are filled successively, a weld line can arise on the dome which, after the plastics material has cured, can possibly have a reduced strength compared to other portions of the dome. A weld line of this type can thus result in a breaking point at which a crack can occur on the dome when it is under load, which can lead to a reduced strength in the retention of the contact element on the base strip. If the contact element is not held firmly on the associated wall portion of the base strip, it can complicate the mounting of the base strip on, for example, a circuit board and furthermore, can impair the fixing of a plug connector part to the contact element.